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Guild Wars 2 Beta - Character Creation

Good news everyone! I've been invited to the Guild Wars 2 Beta event that is running this weekend and there's no Non-Disclosure Agreement. This means screenshots and videos of this highly anticipated game! Unfortunately, I blew my quota downloading the game, 30 GB all up, so as you can see it's a pretty large game! So I am now once again, shaped (boo!).

No matter, the game still seems to run reasonably well and I've already taken some video and screenshots. In this post, I've uploaded some photos for the character creation process in the game which is more advanced than the original Guild Wars - probably more advanced than a lot of traditional MMORPGs for that matter.

Anyway, onto the screenshots!

Firstly we have the screen where you pick your "home world". I don't actually know what this means and there seems to be a lot of them - I recall seeing something similar in WoW so perhaps they're adopting a similar mechanic in terms of where all your account details are saved? Some were already full but I suspect all of these will be wiped anyway once the game starts in earnest. Anyway, I've selected Divinity Coast as my "home world".

Next we have character creation. You get 5 slots to create a character (which I believe is the same amount you got in the original Guild Wars). However, in the original you really only had 6 professions and one race to pick from: Humans. In GW2 you now have 5 races to pick from: the Charr, Humans, Norn, Asura and Sylvari. The Asura and Sylvari were locked for the beta. You also have 8 professions to pick from: Warrior, Ranger, Mesmer, Engineer, Thief, Elementalist, Necromancer and Guardian (so five of the old professions return along with three new ones).

You now have quite a bit more flexibility in how you create your character. Not quite at the same level as The Sims but close. For example, instead of just picking the height of your character you can now pick the physique. Other things that are new to character creation is the ability to change several facial features (such as the facial hair, eyes, nose, mouth and jaw) and pick particular colours for your armour.

The most exciting part though is the ability to create a background for your character, a bit like traditional single player CRPGs. You're able to choose a favourite tool for your engineer - I ended up picking the goggles. You're also able to pick how you handle situations: do you use charm, intimidation or do you have a moral compass that others respect? Was your character brought up on the streets, as a commoner or as a noble? You can pick that too! You even get to pick a "missed opportunity" - the two more tragic ones are no doubt not knowing who your parents were or losing your sister to centaurs. Missing out on joining the circus seems like a more amusing one!

Finally humans get to choose which of the old gods they revere (Kormir for me) and your character is set. Depending on your race, you will have different background questions to answer which will have a slight impact on how your adventure unfolds.